NFR27

“The camel’s nose is a metaphor for a situation where the permitting of a small, seemingly innocuous act will open the door for larger, clearly undesirable actions.” (Wikipedia) In the fable, a camel seeks shelter from a raging storm in the tent of its owner. Initially he permits the camel to stick only its nose inside, but bit by bit it comes to occupy the whole tent, with the owner pushed out into the weather.

Back in 2012, a partnership led by Williams Partners L.P. of Tulsa planned to profit from ramming the Constitution pipeline down the length of Franklin. Only two years later, a Houston company, Kinder Morgan, wanted to cash-in similarly with the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline, only fifty feet from the first. This one would come with a compressor station. Revisions of the second company’s plan added a chemical facility to a much expanded complex. Even more was proposed with the addition of a huge power generating plant, possibly next to the Marcy South high-voltage line. Continue reading…

Santa and Mrs. Claus will come to the Fire Hall at 6:00 P.M. Free pictures taken of children with Santa and Mrs. Claus, plus hot chocolate and cookies, and a craft gift.

Mayor Tom Briggs has agreed to organize the Christmas Stroll house tour. We are looking for homeowners willing to open their decorated house for viewing. The tour is run in an open house, self -guided format. If interested, call Tom at 829-6885. If you would like to be on the tour but need help getting your house ready, we might be able to get volunteers to help.

If you have an event you would like to add to the day, please contact Kim Hyzer at 829-8820 or khyzer@frontiernet.net for inclusion in the advertising.

What supporters of pipelines and compressor are missing…

I mentioned some of its findings: compressors emit benzene and formaldehyde which are implicated, respectively, in childhood leukemia and asthma as well as in adult cancers. A member of the audience challenged me, saying that children were already dying of cancer even though we have no compressors. I’m not sure what her point was but I suspect she meant that there is a natural background level of kids getting cancer and asthma and that we opponents of compressors are just a bunch of nervous nellies standing in the way of progress and prosperity. Let’s ignore for the moment the possibility that we can do something about children getting cancer. Instead, let’s look at the purported economic benefits of the proposed gas infrastructure that supporters expect will follow along with the pipeline.

We are all deeply embedded in a society that thrives by exploiting resources while polluting the environment. This is not something we can change overnight nor even in a few decades. Our industrial revolution developed within a history where scarcity was a certainty and abundance a rare blessing. This is still true for most of mankind but we, the fortunate benefactors of the plenty produced by the scientific innovations of the last couple of hundred years, are finally becoming aware, thanks to that same science, of the perils and the high price of the path we are on. We are learning that we can gradually slow the pace of our pillaging of earth’s riches — without going back to living in caves — by continually deepening our knowledge of the ways things work in nature.